


deeper than the ordinary soul

by TigerKat



Series: Root and Vine [5]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Murder, Revenge, Torture, girls gotta stick together, it's okay vine does it too, sometimes root overreacts, spree killing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:17:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerKat/pseuds/TigerKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Vine is hurt, Root kills thirteen people. </p><p>Please see explicit trigger warnings in notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deeper than the ordinary soul

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by subluxate the Amazing and Awesome.
> 
> Trigger warnings include implied CSA, an implied rape attempt (that doesn't go very far at all), mention of murder attempts on children, strangulation, some really weird psychological issues with death and depersonalization (seriously, I have no idea what's up with them), PTSD flashbacks, some patriarchal bullshit, and Root does a whole lotta fairly graphic torturing and killing. Please read with care!

The first time Vine is hurt, Root kills thirteen people.

\--

She can't help it, really. They've gone six years together without a scratch on either one of them, six years and two dead men and Vine, beautiful, blood on her hands and contentment in her face. Root doesn't enjoy killing people, but she does enjoy that serenity, Vine deep asleep in their bed with one arm curved daintily over her head, delicate and deadly. 

She'll kill, and happily too, if the rewards are sufficient. That reward, she thinks, is worth the world.

\--

_sam didn't sleep the days hanna was missing but stayed up staring at the moon and a good thing too because hanna came to her, staggering, hands and knees shredded and thighs bloody, neck red-ringed breath harsh eyes dead_

_she put her shoulder under hanna's arm, wrapped her hands and knees in bandages, did what she could for everything else, and oh she wished she could take hanna to the hospital but she knew now what they'd do, she knew they couldn't be trusted_

_she did her best_

_hanna died anyway_

_so did sam_

\--

He put his hands around her neck and squeezed. Of course Vine hurt him. Root is surprised she didn't kill him. 

Well, that's all for the better, because now Root can.

\--

Vine comes home to her with blood on her hands and her eyes empty, and for a moment Root can't breathe, she's so frightened. It's just like the day Hanna came to Sam, dying as she walked, and Root chokes on the memory. She won't lose Vine. She can't. She is Vine and Vine is her and she _can't lose Vine._

And then Vine gasps, sobbing in air, clinging to her, whimpering her name, _Root, Root, Root._

"I'm here," she says, curling her fingers through Vine's hair, catching Vine's tears with her thumbs and her mouth. "I'm here. I'm here."

\--

_her mother would say the cops the hospital the firefighters even but sam knew, she knew they wouldn't listen, they wouldn't believe, they never believed and they'd make it all hanna's fault for being hurt, for dying and they'd make it all sam's fault for knowing, for seeing, for telling when no one wanted her to_

_so she took care of hanna, brought her food and water and bandages and creams, spent every night next to her telling her the truth "i'm here hanna i'm here i'm here" and every night hanna didn't say anything she died a little more until there was nothing left but the diamond-hard core of her, the pieces that loved hanna and loved the code and hated the world and all the people in it, the base of her, the root of her_

_and one night vine opened her eyes and said "hanna died"_

_and root said "i know, so did sam, i'm here anyway"_

_and vine said "so am i"_

\--

It was supposed to be easy. There was a man alive who people wanted dead; Vine would kill him and Root would frame some idiot for it, and in return, three million dollars. Simple. Root sat down with her computers and laid her foundations, while Vine put on her pretty blue dress and her lovely silver sandals, silver bracelets and silver earrings, a silver gun snugged close to her thigh and a silver-handled knife between her breasts. He didn't have a chance, Root thought happily, and kissed Vine goodbye, lipstick smudging red over her mouth. 

\--

Vine calms after a while, enough to tell her story, her face still pressed into Root's stomach, her arms still twined around her waist. "He saw the knife," she says, her breath warm against Root's naval. "He tried to kill me."

She doesn't need to say more. The fading handprints on her neck, the flushing bruises say it all. 

"Did you hurt him?" Root asks, stroking Vine's tangled hair.

"I don't know," Vine says. 

Root curves an arm over Vine's tense shoulders, feels them relax under her touch. "Can I hurt him?" she asks.

Vine shudders against her. "Yes," she says. "Please."

\--

_root is the core of herself, the basic code, all the extraneous bits that were sam deleted, and vine has been stripped down, leaves clipped, all that was hanna pruned away_

_they clung close that night and told each other things, how sam died, how hanna was murdered, pulling loose code and nearly-severed tendrils back into themselves, locking into each other, grafting all their broken pieces together_

_apart they were half a girl at best, but together they were whole, root and vine, base and branch, one whole person where two girls died_

_"i'm here," root said again, whispered it into vine's hair_

_"i'm here," vine echoed back, her mouth moving against root's temple_

\--

Vine did hurt him. As far as Root can piece together, he put his hands around her neck, and Vine remembered Hanna, remembered dying. She clawed at his face, kicked him, bit and scratched, anything to get away.

He told the emergency room doctor that a woman had attacked him when he refused to sleep with her. Root smiles when she hears that. As if Vine cared for such silly things.

Vine is sleeping now, her arm curved over her head in one graceful arc. Her face is peaceful, serene. Root kisses her forehead, and takes the small silver gun and the silver-handled knife, and goes out.

\--

One, the man who hurt Vine. She doesn't kill him, not yet. 

Two, three, and four, his friends who watched him hurt Vine and laughed. She shoots them in the stomach, watches them bleed out, slow. Five, six, seven, the women accompanying them, who didn't watch but did nothing to stop it. One shot each in the back of the head, quick and painless—Root understands their fear, though she will not forgive it.

Eight, nine, ten, the people in the rooms on either side who banged on the walls and didn't help her. Gunshots through the mouths; they should have said something. Eleven, the motel worker who heard Vine scream, who watched her run bleeding, and did nothing. She blinds him, then cuts his throat. Twelve, thirteen, the cops who took his report, who blamed Vine for this. She cuts their lying throats too.

And back to one, the man she's left bound in his hotel room. 

\--

_they left two weeks later hand in hand, with backpacks and money and makeup so vine could pass for eighteen, her eyes were old enough now that no one questioned it_

_and root was only twelve but that didn't matter, they told people they were sisters and no one questioned it, two sisters travelling north sitting side by side on the bus holding hands, no one thought it was odd_

_root wondered sometimes whether sam's mother would miss her, whether hanna's parents would ever know how she died, but vine was there and their hands were tangled together, and she couldn't really bring herself to care anymore about anyone who wasn't them_

_"i'm here," vine said, in a dark stretch of oklahoma_

_"so am i" root said, and squeezed her hand_

\--

Root is back in their safehouse by the time Vine wakes, the blood washed away and the weapons cleaned. Vine stirs and mumbles. Root strokes her hair, murmurs, "I'm here, Vine, I'm here," until her other half opens her eyes, looks sleepily up at her.

"Are you here?" Root asks, and she half fears the answer.

"I'm here," Vine replies, and nestles closer, pressing her forehead against Root's hip. "What happened?"

\--

She kills him, eventually. She ties him down and strangles him until he pleads for breath, then lets him recover and does it again. She cuts off his fingers one by one—she wants to take the hands he hurt Vine with, but she doesn't want him to bleed out too soon. She draws neat little lines with the knife, patterning Vine's scars onto his neck; she slashes his thighs and shreds his knees and cuts up the heels of his hands. Let him feel what Vine felt. Let him take her pain.

Root shoots him in the head when she finally does kill him. It's quicker than he deserves, but she doesn't want to linger. 

\--

_they go to sleep back to back and wake up tangled together, start the day walking a foot apart and end it pressed together_

_root's chest rises when vine breathes in, vine grows sleepy when root yawns_

_there is no one else in the world who matters, no one else but them_

_"i'm here," one of them says, when the night falls heavy and cruel on their shoulders_

_"so am i," the other replies_

\--

"I'm here," Root croons, curled up beside her Vine. "I'm here."

\--

Vine turns in close, presses her face against Root's neck, whispers, "So am I."


End file.
